Effect of online advertising feature on customer satisfaction in selected five-star hotels in Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

Over the past years, the hospitality industry has contributed immensely to Kenya’s economy. In the recent years, online advertising features has been widely used for marketing diverse products and services. In Kenya, the hotel industry has begun to recognize the importance of understanding online advertising features as a contributing factor for customer satisfaction. The industry can contribute even more if proper and better attention is given to the delivery service in the sector. The purpose of the study was to establish the effects of online advertising features on customer satisfaction in selected five-star hotels in Nairobi County, Kenya.The study examined the hotel industry in Nairobi and investigated online advertising features such as Multimedia, Picturesand Content on the dependant variable Customer satisfaction. The study was guided by Kano’s satisfaction model and dissonance theory. The research design employed was explanatory research design because it explains the features of the variables and at the same time explain cause effect relationship between variables.The target population was 2500 customers drawn from 15 five-star hotels in Nairobi County. The five-star hotels were selected since they possess the features of interest to the study. The sample size was determined using Yamane formula which gave a sample size of 345 customers. Purposive sampling was undertaken to select customers who had done online booking. The customers were selected proportionately by simple random sampling based on the number of customers in each selected hotel. The study utilized a questionnaire administered to hotel customers. Reliability of data was tested using Cronbach’s Alpha. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data. Pearson correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were used to test the relationships among variables. The study results revealed that Multimedia feature in online advertisement (β1=0.160, p- 0.008<0.05), Picture feature in online advertisement (β2=0.073, p- 0.015<0.05) and Content feature in online advertisement (β3=0.152, p- 0.009<0.05) had a significant effect on customer satisfaction. In conclusion, multimedia feature was found to have the highest effect on customer satisfaction followed by picture and content feature respectively. The hotels should therefore enrich their online advertisement using multimedia features. The hotel management in their pursuit to enhance competitiveness in the market should maximize on the use of picture in their websites and advertisement. The hotels should incorporate informative contents about their brand in their online advertisements. A similar study may be carried out in all five-star hotels in Kenya in order to allow for generalization of the results. A study may also be conducted on effects of television advertisement features on customer satisfaction in hotel industry.